Iphone Games by Jason Booth

Monday, April 20, 2009

My iPhone activities have been on hold for a few weeks now due to my trip next week to speak at the university of Copenhagen (Denmark) and at the University of Gotland in Visby (Sweden). I've finished all my slides; or at least I've stopped adding tons of new ones and am polishing it all up, and come this friday I'll be off. I haven't been to Denmark, Iceland or Sweden yet, so this should be a lot of fun. Unfortunately I don't have a lot of time in any one location, as I can only be away from the kid(s) for so long, but either way it'll be fun to get a taste for each country.

If you happen to be in the area, I believe the first day's lecture at the University of Copenhagen is open to the general public. That talk will be on general game design philosophy and approaches that I use in my regular work.

After I get back I want to see if I can ship one more iPhone game before the new baby arrives. My wife is due in early July, so it's going to be tight, and I know I won't have much time once the baby is born.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Well, for some reason Apple rejected my first update. Apparently they didn't like one of the error messages (Server Request Failed) when trying to download scores from the web server. I'll change it tonight and submit the 1.1 update, hopefully they'll take less than a week to accept or reject it.

While I'm at it, I wanted to point out something I worked on in my spare time; it's a game designed to help low income single mothers understand how to manage their finances better. It was a real pleasure to work on, because not only did it have a great cause behind it, but more importantly I didn't have to build it myself ;) I basically attended a few brainstorming sessions with other Boston area designers, then followed up with various iterations throughout the process. I'd offer my advice and thoughts, then someone else would figure out what to do with them. All the fun, none of the worry. Ha, if only I could get paid to spout off opinions without filter all the time...

Anyway, the results are really encouraging (more so than I would have thought), and I hope to help out where possible on future games. Check it out here if you'd like:

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Splat version 1.01 is currently waiting on Apple's approval (actually, it's been waiting since last week). This was mostly a bug fix update, and should be out soon. This version contained:

- Powerup's now blink for 2 seconds before disappearing

- Fixed high score screen crash

- Fixed high score rendering error

- Fixed local/world button acting as toggle

- Fixed High Score screen freeze

- Fixed several save/continue bugs

- Fixed size of subtractive splat when power-ups are removed

- fixed extra release crash when starting a new game after saving an old one

Version 1.1, which adds some significant new game play options is code complete. I'll submit it as soon as version 1.01 is approved. Hopefully it'll be out by next week. Here's the change list:

- Replaced UIView based High Score screen with hand coded one

- Added next/prev buttons to high score list for paging through

- Moved life bar to top of screen

- Added run-time score display

- Added 2 new powerups, TimeWarp and Push

- Replaced sound engine with entirely new sound engine

- This fixes an occasional in-game crash

- Added enemy fire sound back in

And finally, here are several promo codes for anyone on the fence. If you take one, please leave a comment in the thread saying which promo code your taking so others don't waste their time trying them. And please leave a review on the App store if you like the game, as this helps drive sales. And finally, enjoy, and see you on the leaderboards..

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Splat is submitted to the app store and waiting for review! It should be up for sale by monday. I captured a quick video of myself playing the game, it's a little grainy and needs a reshoot, but should be enough to give you an impression of how it came out on the iPhone.

For those unfamiliar, Splat is port from a previous flash game I made, which is in itself a riff off of Mono, a little shooter I fell in love with several years back. I wrote the flash version in about 4 days, the iPhone version took significantly longer, mostly due to inexperience with the platform and programing language, and having to rework the control scheme a few times to make it feel natural on the iPhone. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the result, even if the process of getting there was a bit bumpy.

While the app is waiting for approval, I'm taking a few nights off before jumping back into the other games I'm working on (and most likely doing a patch or two for splat if/when bugs crop up). It's really fun to work on your own stuff at night, but you don't sleep much when you do.

I'll make another post here when it goes live, and as always I'd love to hear constructive feedback on the game and I hope you pick it up and enjoy it.

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Like many others, I'm doing iPhone development in my spare time. The first game I'm working on is almost done, and since you really need a website for an app, I'm bringing this blog back from it's long slumber.

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About Me

Though I studied music production in college, I eventually left to help start a game development company as a 3d artist (now known as Turbine). I've since taken up programing, and spend most of my time thinking about game design. I still try to spend time seeing live music with friends as much as possible, or working on the occational album. I left Turbine in april of 2005 and joined Harmonix, where I worked on Guitar Hero I and II and finally Rock Band. I left in September of 2007 to join a new startup, Conduit Labs. Conduit's still going strong, but I was pulled back to Harmonix in December of 2008 to do rapid prototyping.